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There was a profound opportunity to tell the story how heroin addicts who barely survived their respective early struggles were faring 20 years later. That’s the story I believe Danny Boyle was trying to tell. In my book, he failed miserably — that rocket sailed sky-high over his head. T2 Trainspotting should by all rights have been a deep and powerful film that stood firmly on its own. Instead, he made a picture utterly pointless without the original.

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I’ve always paired Trainspotting and Pulp Fiction as the two great, seminal, earth-shattering films of the nineties. The movies that were so utterly transformative. Quentin Tarantino never tried to remake or produce a sequel to Pulp Fiction, and I hope he stays true in this regard. Danny Boyle, a vastly inferior filmmaker, didn’t have the same self-restraint.

So it sounds like I’m bashing the heck out of Boyle’s follow-up. But I liked it just enough for a thumbs-up. Why? I love the original so much, and T2, for all its many shortcomings, works well as a vibrant homage to the groundbreaking original. Kind of like when a rich kid goes off to run the business his father built from the ground up, and is able to at least keep it afloat a few more years. Put another way, dumb down “massively entertaining” and see what you get: something not nearly as entertaining, but still not a bad trifle.

Marginally recommended, with a heavy dose of all the standard caveats, plus add: an adoration of Trainspotting, and that you see it on a big screen with big sound. Both trailers included below not by accident. 6/10